When Scott Moore was tabbed to run CBC Sports a year ago, many considered it to be the equivalent of being handed the helm of the Titanic.

When Scott Moore was tabbed to run CBC Sports a year ago, many considered it to be the equivalent of being handed the helm of the Titanic.

The network was reeling from the loss of three of Canada's top four sports properties: the CFL, the Canadian Curling Association championships and the Olympics.

In addition, there was no guarantee it would retain the show that keeps the network running: Hockey Night In Canada. The fear inside CBC Sports was palpable, with many wondering if the network would basically shut down the sports department after the Beijing Olympics.

But a year later, there's a distinct air of optimism and a feeling that the network is on its way back and not just because it locked up the NHL for six years.

Moore is being credited with restoring the CBC as a major player on the sports scene.

"He's revitalized the place," says veteran CBC producer Don Peppin. "He's always challenging us to do more and to do it better."

Others at the CBC speak of the way Moore has raised morale through his enthusiasm and by backing his troops. There's a new sense of openness, with Moore even writing his own online blog to explain the CBC's machinations to viewers.

That move paid off during the recent world curling trials, when Moore used his blog to mollify fans upset at the lack of television coverage. Though not all were satisfied, opening up the Kremlin-like CBC sports department was impressive.

But others say that while Moore has put CBC back in the game, at this point he's done little more than patch big holes with a thin layer of cement. He's added only two major properties – the Toronto Blue Jays and figure skating – and several that bring in middling ratings.

But the fact that Moore has created such a buzz with that is testament to his abilities. Even his competitors speak highly of him.

"Scott's a born leader with a tireless work ethic," says CTV-Rogers Olympics consortium president Keith Pelley.

Laura Mellanby, who worked with Moore at Rogers Sportsnet and is now director of pay-per-view with Bell ExpressVu, calls him "the most inspirational leader I've ever seen."

High praise indeed for a guy who had to be persuaded to give up his dream of being a stand-up comedian and go to broadcasting school. Oh, yes, and he got the CBC job only because the one he really wanted – heading host broadcasting operations for the Vancouver Olympics – went to his predecessor, Nancy Lee.

"I ended up with the far better job," he says now. And it's the challenge that has made it so.

"I took the job because it gave me an opportunity to work on getting the place back on the right track," the 46-year-old Montreal native says. "Coming into an existing job that was going well would have had very little appeal to me."

That might explain why, as Moore puts it, he has a history of changing employers frequently. "I seem to work in four-year cycles," he says with an ever-present laugh.

That doesn't count his brief fling as a comedian, which got him a couple of paying gigs at Yuk Yuk's back in the '80s. But Moore, who describes his style as similar to George Carlin ``but cleaner and nowhere near as good," realized quickly that he wasn't going to get rich telling jokes.

Pelley has a different take: "Comedy is very difficult to do. That's all I'm going to say."

Moore has no regrets about his brief stage career, saying it was perfect preparation for the TV business.

``If you've been a stand-up comic, you can stand up in front of anybody and not be nervous," he says. ``You'll never get heckled the way you can as a stand-up comic."

After graduating from Ryerson, Moore was hired as TSN's first assignment editor. Four years in, he left to become a freelance producer.

A year later, CTV hired him as supervising producer for the Barcelona Olympics and he returned to TSN in 1992.

Sure enough, four years later, he left to freelance. A year after that, CTV hired him as head of production for its new property, Sportsnet.

Four years later, he went back to freelancing after a falling-out with president Doug Beeforth.

"Doug is a good friend, but he's very conservative and I'm not," Moore says.

Four years later, he landed at the CBC, which was badly in need of somebody to not only rebuild a depleted lineup but mend a lot of fences. The CFL and CCA both left after nasty disputes with the network.

At the time, Moore seemed like an odd fit for a corporation with a reputation for bureaucracy and a reluctance to take chances. Moore was known for throwing caution to the wind.

He says many feared he'd simply take a broom to the place and fill it with some of the young, camera-friendly talent he'd hired at Sportsnet.

"I think a lot of people expected huge changes, all-new commentary teams," he says. ``But I have respect for the tradition of the CBC."

So far, his only move was to phase out hockey analyst Harry Neale.

If there was a misconception about Moore, the misconceptions were mutual.

"I'd been critical of CBC for years," he says. "My criticisms turned out to be untrue."

For one, he says the CBC is not playing with public money, a constant complaint of private networks.

"The reality is the sports department makes a profit by any accounting technique you want to put on it," he says.

More important, he says, it's less bureaucratic than CTV, TSN or Sportsnet. He also calls it "one of the most entrepreneurial places I've ever worked."

That will have to be the case if the CBC is going to restore its sports roster to past glories. Critics argue that basketball and MLS soccer aren't part of a CBC mandate that has traditionally focused on under-served Canadian properties.

One suggests that adding Blue Jays, Raptors and Toronto FC was turning CBC into "the Toronto sports network."

Moore disagrees.

"I consider our mandate to be as relevant as possible to the most number of sports fans in the country," he says. "All number of professional sports, as well as amateur sports, qualify under that criteria."

In fact, he's working on new deals he says will shock many in the business.

An important change is beefing up CBC's sports news, especially on the Internet. To that end, Moore has added live streaming and all kinds of online content. It has paid off, with traffic to cbcsports.ca growing five-fold in the past year and the operation now turning a profit.

He also applied for a digital licence to operate an amateur sports channel and there are rumours CBC is looking to get involved in a Canadian version of the Golf Channel.

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